Divers and support crew off Lions Bay in Howe Sound, the site of sponges thought to be critical habitat for juvenile rockfish.
Credit: Marine Life Sanctuaries SocietyRussell Clark

Divers and support crew off Lions Bay in Howe Sound, the site of sponges thought to be critical habitat for juvenile rockfish.
Credit: Marine Life Sanctuaries SocietyRussell Clark

A rockfish on a sponge on Passage Island reef, a Rockfish Conservation Area.
Credit: Roy Mulder

A poacher gives a photographer the finger in a rockfish conservation area off of Bowyer Island in Howe Sound.
Credit: Roy Mulder

Hamish Tweed and Chris Straub of the Marine Life Sanctuaries Society return from a dive of 68.5 metres to explore sponge gardens for the first time off Lions Bay in Howe Sound.
Credit: Marine Life Sanctuaries Society

Hamish Tweed and Chris Straub of the Marine Life Sanctuaries Society ready for a dive of 68.5 metres to explore sponge gardens for the first time off Lions Bay in Howe Sound. Credit: Marine Life Sanctuaries Society

On a bracing morning, the sun dancing across this great urban fiord, the Marine Life Sanctuaries Society members break the surface off Lions Bay, all smiles, after a complicated first-ever dive to a fantastic garden of white sponges.

“Unbelievable, really,” announces Tweed, removing his breathing regulator. “Like large bushes, and clusters of them, six to eight feet in height and probably a dozen feet wide. And fish moving all throughout them. I absolutely have to go back.”

Technical diving to such depths — 20 to 30 metres is more typical — has its dangers but is part of a greater conservation plan for Howe Sound.

The society has lost faith in the federal government’s ability to protect marine life and is launching its own grassroots initiative to document critical marine habitats in Howe Sound and create a network of voluntary no-take marine protected areas.

“It’s very clear no one is watching the farm anymore,” society president Roy Mulder said from the stern of the 12-metre charter dive vessel, Topline. “We’re determined as an organization to put a stewardship program together because we can’t trust our government to do this anymore. ”

This particular 80-minute dive — the first to this patch of Howe Sound ocean bottom — involved no fewer than six tanks each, 17 depression stops on the way up, and the inhalation of a mix of oxygen, helium and nitrogen.

What drives divers to the ocean depths is similar to what propels any other explorer — the desire to explore strange new worlds.

“I get to be (Ernest) Shackleton in my own little way for a couple of hours on the weekend, seeing stuff that not everyone gets to see,” says Tweed, referencing the late explorer who led three British expeditions to Antarctica in the early 1900s.

As part of its campaign, the society is also enlisting the eyes and ears of local communities to report poaching in those few areas where harvesting of marine life is officially banned, including Porteau Cove, Point Atkinson, and Whytecliff Park.

The society is also conducting shoreline interpretive programs for the public and pressuring senior governments to work together to rid Howe Sound of unsightly and polluting derelict vessels.

Mulder cited continuing federal cutbacks as well as legislation last year that reduced Ottawa’s involvement in environmental assessments and the protection of fish habitat. “There is a multitude of stuff going on and the federal government is pulling further and further back.”

The society is no ordinary company of adventurers.

Members includes Chris Harvey-Clark, a veterinarian at the University of B.C., fellow of the New York-based Explorers Club, and underwater videographer who has earned international recognition for researching and documenting species such as the Greenland shark.

He notes that sponges are as delicate as they are beautiful, and are thought to serve as important refuges for juvenile rockfish, whose stocks have declined seriously in Howe Sound despite the federal declaration of Rockfish Conservation Areas. Lingcod egg-masses have also been discovered among the patches of sponges.

“The RCAs are failing,” Harvey-Clark argued. “They aren’t enforced and because they are identified they are actually targeted by poachers.”

He noted he has seen little federal action since helping to organize a conference on marine protected areas in Vancouver in 1991.

“Protection is desperately needed. Here we are, 23 years later, and we’ve still done bugger-all. There’s lot of smoke and mirrors and ‘process’ but nothing has really been done.”

A 2012 report by the Royal Society of Canada concluded that the federal government “has made little substantive progress in fulfilling national and international commitments to sustain marine biodiversity” and that the Species At Risk Act has proven ineffective in protecting the marine environment. Well under one per cent of Canada’s oceans is protected.

Mulder said vigilant Bowen Island residents have been successful at deterring shellfish poachers, but that angling continues to be widespread in RCAs due to the absence of federal enforcement. “The problem in B.C. is there is a very strong poaching industry,” he said.

He recalls using a telephoto lens to photograph a man angling off a boat within an RCA off Bowyer Island. The poacher simply gave him the finger. “These guys aren’t scared. They have no fear of any reprisals.”

Other RCAs in Howe Sound are Passage Island, Domett Point and Pam Rock off Anvil Island, West Bay, Upper Centre Bay, and Woolridge Island off Gambier Island, Pasley Island, and waters off Lions Bay and parts of West Vancouver.

The society notes that the federal government has identified sponge habitat in Hecate Strait off B.C.’s north coast for protection, but not so in Howe Sound, where the same sponges thrive on the east side of the Sound.

“Here is something in our backyards we can protect,” Mulder confirmed.

Harvey-Clark says part of the problem with marine protection in general is that the general public cannot appreciate subsea ecosystems as they would, say, a patch of old-growth forest in which they might go for a walk.

“We’re the ones who see the devastation,” he said of divers. “The problem is that the majority of the population still sees the marine environment as an infinite source of food and recreation — not something to be protected and preserved.”

Another society member, Glen Dennison, an electrical engineer at TRIUMF particle research lab at UBC, has, over four years, employed a variety of technologies — depth sounder, digital compass, chart plotter, and GPS — as well as an underwater closed-circuit camera to meticulously create three-dimensional, colour-bathymetric maps of some 40 dive sites in Howe Sound.

His work has resulted in a new book, Diving Howe Sound Reefs and Islands, published by the Underwater Council of B.C., which is serving as a template for a network of voluntary no-take marine sanctuaries in Howe Sound. (http://divinghowesound.yolasite.com).

“These are new areas,” said Dennison, who has been diving the Sound for 40 years. “The government doesn’t know a whole lot about them.”

Proceeds from the book go to the deployment of mooring buoys so that boat anchors do not damage the slow-growing sponges and other marine life. Prawn traps can also cause damage, creating cookie-cutter holes in the sponges.

Concluded Dennison: “It only seems common sense as a species that we try to preserve something that is incredibly fragile and we don’t really understand at all.”

Comments

We encourage all readers to share their views on our articles and blog posts. We are committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion, so we ask you to avoid personal attacks, and please keep your comments relevant and respectful. If you encounter a comment that is abusive, click the "X" in the upper right corner of the comment box to report spam or abuse. We are using Facebook commenting. Visit our FAQ page for more information.

Video

Technology Videos

Best of Postmedia

To steel himself for the year-long journey that began Wednesday, Jonathan Pitre has been going over the hard calculus that underpins his decision to pursue a high-risk, high-reward treatment in Minnesota

When he woke up in tears the morning after he had cried himself to sleep, Rohit Saxena knew what he had to do. Leaving his wife, Lesley, asleep in bed, Rohit went downstairs, opened his laptop and began to write. “They say your kids are your hearts outside your body,” he wrote. “I’ll always be […]

Almost Done!

Postmedia wants to improve your reading experience as well as share the best deals and promotions from our advertisers with you. The information below will be used to optimize the content and make ads across the network more relevant to you. You can always change the information you share with us by editing your profile.

By clicking "Create Account", I hearby grant permission to Postmedia to use my account information to create my account.

I also accept and agree to be bound by Postmedia's Terms and Conditions with respect to my use of the Site and I have read and understand Postmedia's Privacy Statement. I consent to the collection, use, maintenance, and disclosure of my information in accordance with the Postmedia's Privacy Policy.

Postmedia wants to improve your reading experience as well as share the best deals and promotions from our advertisers with you. The information below will be used to optimize the content and make ads across the network more relevant to you. You can always change the information you share with us by editing your profile.

By clicking "Create Account", I hearby grant permission to Postmedia to use my account information to create my account.

I also accept and agree to be bound by Postmedia's Terms and Conditions with respect to my use of the Site and I have read and understand Postmedia's Privacy Statement. I consent to the collection, use, maintenance, and disclosure of my information in accordance with the Postmedia's Privacy Policy.